Thursday, May 18, 2017

Lights Out in Syria

In his recent Lights On & Lights Out comparison of NASA's 2012 and 2016 Black Marble maps John Nelson drew attention to how NASA's imagery revealed the incredible fall of nighttime lighting in war-torn Syria. The BBC has now created a series of map animations which also use nighttime satellite imagery to drastically illustrate the effect of the war on Syria's electricity supply.

In Syria from Space the BBC has created three mapped animations showing how the cities of Aleppo, Damascus and Raqqa have been suffering from a lack of electricity supply. Using nighttime satellite imagery from NASA the BBC has made an interactive map for each of the cities which shows the cities lit up before the civil war began and then go dark as the war takes hold.

As the mapped animations plays out you can view the devastating effect of the war on Syria's electricity supply. On each map the lights start to go out as the war takes its effect on the country's infrastructure.

The BBC has also used daytime aerial imagery to provide before and after images of power plants, dams and electricity substations in the country. These before and after images are used to show the damage being done to Syria's infrastructure and to explain why those lights are going off in Syria's towns and cities.